D ELHI HA ZR AT NIZ AM U D DIN BASTI 195

Ratish Nanda

The Nizamuddin area is today recognized as one of the dens-

est ensemble’s of medieval Islamic buildings anywhere in India.
Almost every dynasty to have ruled Delhi has built here; the Il
Bari Turks (also known as the Slave dynasty), the Khaljis, the
Tughlaqs, the Lodis, the Surs and, of course, the Mughals built
some of the finest buildings of their reigns in this small geo-
graphical area that stood along the River Yamuna, until the river
receded eastwards in the nineteenth century.
2
Ghiyas ud din Balban built his palace here in the mid thir-
teenth century, before he ascended the throne in 1265, giving
the area the name of Ghiyaspur. Lal Mahal, as his palace came to
be known, was a fine building with a central dome and is today
the earliest surviving Islamic palace building in India. At Lal
Mahal the first recorded use in the country of the dome and true
arch was employed. The famed traveller Ibn Batutta stayed at Lal
Mahal for a part of his stay in Delhi. Today Lal Mahal serves as a
residence, with portions of the building demolished in 2008–09
to make way for a new mosque.
The significance of the area today derives from Hazrat Niza-
muddin Auliya, the revered fourteenth-century Sufi saint who
chose to establish his khanqah in Ghiyaspur. The grand Jamaat
Khana mosque built here during Alauddin Khalji’s reign (1295–
1315), to royal scale, remains, to date, one of the grandest struc-
tures in the complex. The construction of the mosque and that
of the Baoli in 1320 would signify the presence of a significant
population in Ghiyaspur or even a large volume of pilgrims visit-
ing here to seek the blessings of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya.
The Baoli would have served not only the drinking water needs
of the local community and pilgrims but would also have been
used for wuzu or ablutions prior to prayers at the mosque.
On his death, the saint was buried in the courtyard of the
Jamaat Khana mosque, and the Ghiyaspur area began to be

| 1 | The revered Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, with his favoured disciple,
Amir Khusrau, whose influence on Hindustani culture – a fine synthesis of
Hindu and Muslim elements into a synergetic whole – is dominant even today.
| 2 | The Jamat Khana mosque within the Dargah enclosure is now undergoing
conservation work by AKTC on the request of the traditional keepers of the
shrine.
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known after him as “Nizamuddin”. For almost seven hundred
years, pilgrims have been visiting the shrine of the saint and
since it is considered auspicious to be buried near a saint’s
grave seven centuries of tomb building can now be seen here.
Within six months of the death of the saint, his favourite disci-
ple, the great poet Amir Khusrau, also died, unable to bear the
grief of the loss of his spiritual master. Hazrat Amir Khusrau
(1253–1325) has, till today, maintained his position as a revered
figure in the Indo-Persian cultural landscape of the South Asian
subcontinent for over seven hundred years. In keeping with Sufi
pluralistic traditions, he was, without doubt, the most popular
proponent of what has come to be called Hindustani culture, a
fine synthesis of Hindu and Muslim elements into a synergetic
whole. He was a devout follower of the Chishti order while being
| 3 | The entrance to the Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya.
| 4 | Barah Khambha, a 16th-century tomb and its park setting, is presently being
restored in partnership with the Delhi Development Authority.
D ELHI HA ZR AT NIZ AM U D DIN BASTI 197
associated with the courts of at least seven kings of Delhi, strad-
dling the spiritual and materialistic worlds with ease and spread-
ing the Sufi message of pluralism.
Structures were built surrounding the Baoli of Hazrat Niza-
muddin Auliya up till late Mughal times with the southern arcade
dating from 1379–80. Following partial collapse of the Baoli in
2008, a major conservation initiative is now underway, where
eighteen families living on the top of the southern arcade have
been provided alternate housing by the Aga Khan Trust for Cul-
ture (AKTC).
The spate of tomb building in the area continued through
the Lodi period and, even though some of the significant royal
tombs of the Lodi dynasty were built almost a mile east of the
Dargah of Hazrat Nizmamuddin Auliya, structures such as the
20 0 PART III TR AC ES OF TH E M UG HAL WORLD TODAY:
RE VALORIZED H ERITAG E
tomb known as Barahkhambha, Gol Gumbad and Do Sirihya
Gumbad were built within Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti.
It was with the coming of the Mughals that the Nizamuddin
area was dotted with garden-tombs; in fact, the earliest build-
ings of the Mughal dynasty were built here. The blue-domed Nila
Gumbad is, without doubt, the earliest building of the Mughal
era to have been built in Delhi. Located a few yards south of
Hazrat Nizamuddin’s chillgah, on a river island, the dome, tile
work and plasterwork are all reminiscent of Persian influence.
Though it seems later burial in Nila Gumbad continued, and as
such created confusion about the date of the structure, it is the
Nizamuddin area that defined pre-Shahjahanabad Mughal Delhi.
Sabz Burj, literally ‘green dome’, now standing in a traffic island
on Mathura Road, is possibly contemporary to Nila Gumbad,
pre-dating Humayun’s Tomb.
The Nizamuddin Basti is densely populated and though
boasting of seven centuries of living culture and built heritage
6 8
7 9
the quality of life of residents has been poor with high malnutri-
tion rates among children, lack of health, education and sanita-
tion infrastructure, low employment rates with under one per
cent of women employed and limited access to urban services
and access to parks.
AKTC ’s effort here has thus followed an urban landscape
approach pioneered by AKTC in similar initiatives in Cairo, Kabul
and Zanzibar, among other cities, and the focus on the context
of built heritage has meant that the preservation of living culture
represented by music, food, rituals and craft has been coupled
with the conservation of the built heritage.
With thousands inhabiting the densely populated Hazrat
Nizamuddin Basti, major efforts to improve the quality of life of
inhabitants has led to a socio-economic programme that today
directly benefits seventy per cent of residents and several thou-
sand pilgrims from across India and other parts of the world. The
project has demonstrated that conservation and development

10
initiatives can and should be part of a single process. Major
improvements in health, education, water and sanitation infra-
structure have been undertaken. Urban improvements have also
included repaving streets, landscaping neighbourhood parks,
housing improvement, rubbish collection and management and,
more recently, developing byelaws for the heritage zone.
Community involvement in the conservation effort, through
training of tour guides, vocational training and the creation of
women’s craft production groups, has also instilled a sense of
pride in the community.
| 5 | Preceding pages: Qawwali performance at the Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin
Auliya.
| 6 | Community health workers visit door-to-door to ensure health-seeking
behaviour among women improves.
| 7 | With under 1 % of women employed, the project has emphasized vocational
training for economic opportunities, such as embroidery.
| 8 | One of the neighbourhood parks has been designed for the exclusive use of
the women who live in one of Delhi’s most densely populated neighbourhoods.
201
Art and culture festivals and heritage walks have, since 2009,
attracted thousands of first-time visitors, especially school
groups, from across Delhi to the Basti, helping those concerned
to better understand the pluralistic nature of the Islam preached
and practiced here since the fourteenth century.
Conservation works in the Basti have to date focused on
the fourteenth-century Baoli and the Mughal-era mauso-
leum known as Chausath Khamba. Works are planned for
other Mughal-era structures, such as Atgah Khan’s Tomb and
Barahkhambha.
| 9 | Musical traditions, such as Qawwali, were fostered and developed here at
Hazrat Nizamuddin’s Dargah. AKTC has created performance spaces as
well as worked with musicians to document, disseminate and train.
| 10 | Young people of the Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti have carried out a cultural
mapping of the area and been trained as guides. They provide educational
tours to over 5000 school children annually.
202 PART III TR AC ES OF TH E M UG HAL WORLD TODAY:
RE VALORIZED H ERITAG E
Baoli
At the Nizamuddin Baoli, following the collapse of one of the
walls, major conservation works have been carried out since
2009. The Baoli was hemmed in with modern construction,
which led to its partial collapse in July 2008. A major conserva-
tion programme was undertaken involving the repair and con-
solidation of the monument coupled with cleaning the well of
seven hundred years of accumulated deposits requiring 8000
man-days of work. This was followed with a series of consulta-
tions with local community representatives and families resid-
ing over the structure. Nineteen families have been provided
alternate homes and support in ensuring health care, education
opportunities for children and vocational training for employ-
ment to these families. The works at the Baoli aimed not only at
restoring the architectural character of the monument but also
at enhancing the setting of the fourteenth-century step-well and
so four monuments standing on its edge have been conserved,
including two in private ownership.
Chausath Khamba
The tomb of Mirza Aziz Kokaltash, the son of Atgah Khan, stands
on a high plinth within an enclosure with a forecourt and is
entered through an impressive gateway, mostly stripped of its
11
| 11 | Atgah Khan’s Tomb has unique inlay work that will require careful restor-
ation by master craftsmen.
| 12 | The Hazrat Nizamuddin Baoli partially collapsed in 2008 requiring AKTC to
undertake urgent conservation work that also meant providing alternate
dwelling units for 18 displaced families.
stone cladding. It is known as Chausath Khamba, on account of
its sixty-four pillars supporting the twenty-five domed bays.
Today hemmed in within Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti, the tomb
is a ‘pillared/arcaded hall’ built entirely of marble and thus could
have served as an inspiration to Emperor Shah Jahan for his
pillared halls of audience comprising foliated arches and for his
favoured use of marble.
Each of the marble blocks used in the domes is unique, with
blocks varying from one another on account of horizontal and
vertical curvature, and the length and thickness of the stone.
Furthermore each ring is of varying width. The Mughal builders
used iron clamps to fix the marble blocks with adjoining stones.
Over the centuries, water ingress, noticed at the onset of the
project, from each dome, led these clamps to corrode and
expand, thus causing severe damage and bursting of the marble
blocks. Until as recently as 2004, repairs to the burst marble
blocks comprised infill with white cement mortar that matched
the colour when applied but neither retarded the deterioration
process nor ensured structural stability.
With co-funding from the German Embassy, a complex con-
servation programme commenced in 2010. Following exhaus-
tive documentation of each of the domes and the condition
assessment of each individual stone, the conservation process
12
| 13 | The community requested that prior to restoring collapsed portions of the
14th-century Baoli, or stepwell, it be emptied of 700 years of accumulated
deposit that had reached a depth of more than 10 metres. This had to be
manually removed, requiring 8000 man-days of work.
| 14 | The plan and section of the Baoli, today hemmed in by modern
constructions.
 D ELHI HA ZR AT NIZ AM U D DIN BASTI 203

13

5m

14
15

16

3m

| 15 | Craftsmen using traditional tools and building techniques repaired the
marble blocks of the Chausath Khamba over a four-year period.
| 16 | The section, elevation and ground plan of the Chausath Khamba, built
entirely of marble.
| 17 | At the Chausath Khamba, each one of the 25 domes had to be stripped of
its marble cladding in order to repair cracks and to replace iron dowels
with non-corrosive stainless-steel dowels.

required dismantling each of the twenty-five marble domes. This
allowed deep and profuse cracking in the brick masonry to be
addressed and repaired, as well as the damaged marble blocks
to be carefully renovated. Marble repairs mostly required that
broken edges, damaged by corroding iron clamps, be restored
by indenting matching marble of the required shape, thickness
and profile.
In carrying out these repairs, it was essential to ensure that
the keystone remained in place with support from a specially
fabricated framework. The repaired stone blocks were restored
to their precise original location and fixed with non-corroding
stainless-steel clamps. No similar conservation effort requiring
such large-scale dismantling for repair and relying solely on trad-
itional building craft techniques has been recorded elsewhere.
Once the repair methodology was finalized and renovation on
the first dome completed over an eight-month period, the roof
was made watertight by removing cement and laying a tradition-
al lime-concrete layer to adequate slope.
Coupled with the conservation works, the forecourt was
sensitively landscaped to serve as an open-air amphitheatre,
and three international music festivals have now been organized
to celebrate seven centuries of the Qawwali music traditions
17
D ELHI HA ZR AT NIZ AM U D DIN BASTI 205
created here in Nizamuddin by the saint’s favoured disciple, the
fourteenth-century poet-courtier Amir Khusrau, in praise of the
saint.
Atgah Khan’s Tomb
The mausoleum of Atgah Khan, Emperor Akbar’s minister, is a
jewel-like structure that today stands dwarfed by modern build-
ings at the edge of the Dargah complex. Though small in scale,
the tomb is one of the most significant Mughal-era structures in
the Nizamuddin area and begins to employ the red sandstone-
white marble contrast used to such great effect on Humayun’s
mausoleum. Here, however, the profuse ornamentation is
unique in Delhi, with glazed ceramic tiles being used as inlay in
marble panels, a gesture that is rare, even in Persia. The external
walls up to the dado level are comprised of sandstone blocks
with exquisite marble inlay. Both sandstone and marble panels
have ornamental carvings of geometric motifs.
The interior surfaces of the tomb chamber have been
stripped of sandstone and marble panels that could have been
similarly ornamental. These appear to have been removed for
the antiques market – as has been the case of decorative stone
elements from several other monuments in the project area. The
domed ceiling would have been striking, with coloured incised
plasterwork, of which only a few small patches remain.
The crypt of the tomb is today occupied and lived in by sev-
eral families, who have chipped away at the thick masonry walls
to increase living space – in turn causing severe structural risk to
the monument and endangering their own lives.
Conservation works can possibly commence here only once
the families have been provided alternate accommodation.
The dado-level sandstone panels on the facade would require
replacement as past conservation works have obliterated
original details and defaced the panels, which will need to be
removed to a secure museum space. Restoration of the incised
plasterwork of the ceiling is dependent on studies to reveal the
original patterns.